Did we have a choice?

[Satinjoy]

One of the things that eats at me is whether I could have chosen not to transition and kept sane.  I don't think I could, but I dare not admit it either, since it was so painful for family.

So my question as a confirmed gender dysphoric on hormones is this:  Was there a wall or a point of no return for you with the dysphoria, or did you have a choice?  Or was the choice between great pain and conflict with testosterone and self image, and peace with your body?

I was willing to give up everything when I crashed with this.  Now I am not willing to give up my loved ones, yet cannot imagine attempting to stop hormones, nor do I have any desire to do so.  And for me its partial transition for family's sake, and based on the extent of my own dysphoria which permits me to be presentationally socially male.

Any thoughts or similar struggles?  I'll bet there are thousands.

[Jessica Merriman]

Oh my! I kept this hidden well for 40 years and ended up on 12 daily meds for everything. I hit the wall hard and the male shattered leaving this beautiful woman who has been off all 12 meds for 12 months now and is in near perfect health. Only meds now are HRT and euphoria! I feel 15-20 years younger and have a real zest for life and little things like sunset's. I lost a little in the process, but gained more than I ever thought possible. The only thing I can say positive about living in fear of discovery so long is it gave me the tools to come out big and deal with it well. I may not have ever been able to transition successfully without earning it the hard way. I value every minute now and take nothing for granted anymore.

[stephaniec]

life or death

[FalseHybridPrincess]

yes life or death , and im still in that kind of a situation...
i just hope that one day ill be able to live as a normal girl, if that for some reason proves to be impossible then i guess i wont have much to live for...

[Elyra]

Well, there's always a choice. But basically, stepaniec said it. I could at least try to transition at my own pace, or I could give up on life. Those were my options, as I saw it, seven months ago. Could I have continued just to pretend being a man? Probably. But I would be even more miserable, and I wouldn't actually live.

[Joan]

yes life or death , and im still in that kind of a situation...
i just hope that one day ill be able to live as a normal girl, if that for some reason proves to be impossible then i guess i wont have much to live for...

Yes, that...

I was at that crossroads and transition was the only way to carry on.

Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by the size of the task and how little progress I seem to be making, and that's when I get into a dark place.

I think it's important to focus on the steps forward we are making

But in answer to the OP's question, no, there is no choice, or the only only choice is a very stark one.

[allisonsteph]

I had a choice...

Transition or die

I was well on the way to drinking myself to death. I was drinking 10-12 shots of bourbon a night. I weighed nearly 250 pounds. My blood pressure was 210/140. I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Agonizing over wether to transition or not cost me my marriage my family, and my career. I told my wife as painful as it was losing her and my stepchildren, it is better for them to lose me this way than to suicide.

Since I have gone forward with my transition, I have lost over 75 pounds and am still losing, I have quit smoking, and I have maybe 1-2 drinks a month. My blood pressure is in the normal range without medication. There are no ifs ands or buts about it...

It was transition or die

[Colleen♡Callie]

I resisted the realization that I didn't have a choice anymore.  Even when I knew that I was headed down a path that would eventually lead to suicide, I resisted acknowledging that I had gone through the stages of considering transition, wanting to transition and made it all the way to I have to transition without ever being the wiser.

[Jill F]

If I could have avoided transitioning in any way, I would have.  Let's face it, you don't risk being rejected and ostracized veryone in your life or go through all these medical procedures unless you absolutely have to.  I tried everything to help me cope before I could accept I was trans, and I almost ended up dead twice inside of a month.  Hell, I didn't even want to have to take hormones, and when I finally did, part of me hoped they weren't the answer and I wouldn't have to take them. 

Nope, they were everything I needed and then some.

It seems that I didn't choose transition as much as it chose me.

I suppose I could have chosen to become increasingly more miserable, but why the hell would I ever do that?

[Miss_Bungle1991]

I don't think that I really had a true "choice". It was more like: "How long can I hold this off with whatever distractions I can come up with?" It started at 10 as far as the distractions went (music). Then at 15 it went to street drugs since I had also been battling suicidal thoughts for 5 years and they got stronger and stronger every year. I know that doing drugs isn't a good idea, but without that at the time, I would have never made it to 16, never mind making it to the age that I am now.

With the aid of those two things, I was able to make it through to age 29, but the thoughts were always there in the back in my mind. But I could cope with it. At age 29, the walls came crumbling down and I had one choice: Come out and initiate my transition, or be dead within a matter of months if not weeks. I came out to my mom on August, 3rd, 2006 and went from there.

I knew that by that time, I had no real choice. It truly was life or death and when those ARE your only options. It really isn't a choice anymore. It was more of a matter of survival than anything else regardless of the consequences.

[sam79]

I'm sorry for sombre mood but I don't like this question. There are those who chose to live. But the number of trans* people who take their own lives is beyond upsetting. They didn't have a choice in being who they were, and couldn't cope with taking the hard steps either.

My heart goes out to all who have fallen... 

[big kim]

I was heading for a coffin,not by suicide but due to being so drunk or stoned that I often fell asleep in the bath or set something on fire cooking when out of it.I cut back on my drinking and stopped the speed and weed shortly after starting HRT

[Northern Jane]

There was no choice for me.

I identified as female from earliest childhood, way before starting school, and life just kept getting worse and worse. I wanted children more than anything else in life but realized by age 8 that might not be possible. By puberty I was attracted to boys and just wanted to live a normal life with all the same possibilities as normal girls and that was slipping away from me so I was becoming more and more desperate (for medical help and some way to change my life). As my friends were starting to date and to become sexually active, I was left behind in a no-man's land, unable to live any kind of "normal life". By my early 20s I was very isolated and alone. The birth of my niece (the reawakening of my maternal instincts) and my boyfriend marrying someone else brought my world crashing down and I hung by a slender thread for a couple of years with suicide being an every-present danger. Had it not been for one very concerned doctor and a generous surgeon, I would not have lived much longer.

There was no choice. Forty years later now and I can't believe how close I came to death.

[Jessika Lin]

The easiest way for me to answer your question is to copy my response to someone who was wonder why some people would 'choose' to transition.

I just want to add my response to chaos's well presented response. (Wow that sounds clumsy)

For virtually every trans* person we have exactly two 'choices'. Transition, or die. That's it. That's why in my reply to Walrus I said, "We don't transition because we want to. We transition because we have to."

I'm not sure I have the words to describe things properly but...

I am female, biologically I have a male body though. I hate it. I loathe it! Ever since I hit puberty I've had testosterone poisoning my body and altering it in ways that make me want to scream myself raw and then curl up and die. Every time someone looks at me I know they're not seeing me, they're seeing the (male) costume I've been forced to wear. Every time I look in a mirror I see someone who is not *me* looking back, and I die a little more inside. Every time someone refers to me with male pronouns, every time I hear myself speak, it's like being knifed in the heart.

I'm not transitioning because I decided one day that being a girl would be like, so totally awesome,. I am a girl, even though I haven't been able to act like one or be treated like any other girl. What I *need* is a body that matches my brain so I can stop feeling like a stranger in my own body and so I can dress and behave like any other girl and not have to worry about getting the s**t beat out of me, or outright killed, because I'm not behaving the way people expect someone who looks male to behave.

I have exactly two 'choices', transition or die. As much as transitioning scares me, dying scares me more.

[helen2010]

At this stage in spite of increasing gender dysphoria and perhaps due to low dose hrt I do have choice.  I can choose between full or partial, fast or slow, transition to another gender binary or to somewhere else on the gender continuum.

For me transition is a constant, but do I feel compelled to embrace or to pursue full transition to another binary outcome - the answer for me is a resounding no.  But we are all different.  We each have our own life paths to choose and to take.  This life, at this time, takes me down a path less travelled - androgyne, gender queer and proud of it.

Safe travels

Aisla

[Eva Marie]

I had a choice...

Transition or die

I was well on the way to drinking myself to death. I was drinking 6-10 beers a night. I weighed nearly 190 pounds. My high blood pressure had given me a stroke. Transition cost me my marriage. I told my wife as painful as it was losing her, it is better for her to lose me this way than to suicide.

Since I have gone forward with my transition, I have lost over 35 pounds, and I have just a few drinks a month. My blood pressure is in the normal range with medication. There are no ifs ands or buts about it...

It was transition or die

I changed your story around just a bit to make it my story but I think you can see the similarities. Overweight, health issues, alcohol dependencies - not a good way to live. My choice was between continuing to live the way I was and waiting for death to find me, or choosing life and getting a new "me" out of the deal. That was a decision that didn't take me too long to make once I realized I was at the point of having to make the decision.

[kathyk]

A reason for retiring early was to get my pension set up so JoAnn would get my monthly check if I died. JoAnn expected for us to live relatively happily together for another 25 years, while I couldn't guarantee I be alive for two weeks.  I had come up with so many ways to kill myself it was starting to get funny.  But then one night and I finally decided to live after gathering up all the pills in the house and staring at them.  Yes, transition is a life or death situation.  I didn't wait until I'd taken all those pills to decide to live, I guess I was lucky.

The rest of this is just typing through my early morning cry.  Skip it if you want.

So I created an account here on Susan's to search for advice about two years ago.  But even then I couldn't face the full reality of my life, and I did something shameful and despicable.  I lied about my life and hid some of the truth from the very girls who were giving me hope as I begged for help.  I couldn't say I was self medicating with hormones found on the streets or garage sales because they'd kick me off the forum.  So I embellished the truth with the things I wished I had the strength to do, and that drove me deeper into depression.  I finally hit the emotional bottom, and with that went on to get help from a "real" Gender Therapist and qualified doctors, and not just counselors.  I wrote an apology everyone here on Susan's, and I kind of wish I still had that post.  Oh, I don't tell you girls everything, but what I say is not a lie, and there's no longer a need to embellish the truth.  What's happening in my life is ->-bleeped-<-ty enough without filling it with more of the same. 

But ... I'm never turning back from this transition.

[suzifrommd]

For me, the idea of remaining male seemed so dreary and dismal that I had a hard time even seeing it as a possibility. I enjoyed most of my life as a male, but being female, when I finally figured out that's what I needed to do, was so wonderful and genuine that the rest of life paled in contrast. I don't think I could have remained happy if I hadn't transitioned.

[Marina mtf]

well my turn 

I tried to fix the man, so to speak, by marrying and having children.

That was not a so bad decision, because at least in the first 4-5 years I gave all my love to the children and I think that I have created a good connection between me and them.

But the problem was that I was not a man, my ex-wife expected from me to act as a man, and more on that my MIL... I frantically and pathetically tried to save the marriage continuing to be the "mom" of the children but at the same time trying also to maintain the fake shell of a bread-winner, conscious husband.

I did not have drug or med addictions, but I had sexual compulsive addictions, especially towards the things that Nature had denied me: breasts, pregnancy, nursing... I was even interested in LLL (La Leche Legue) meetings, I went there and brought also my wife... tried to get her engaged with "advanced" parenting issues like extended breastfeeding, co-sleeping etc...

Curiously enough that made my disphoria manageable because I was a man but in the company of women, talking about milk, pregnancy, birth techniques (I actually studied to help my wife have labour at home...), I joined several forums of mothers
to study, to talk to them, to exchange parenting issues.

It was funny, I was not stealth, I declared myself as male, I did not faked a female nick, but the other women "felt" something similar and we connected well, I was a sort of "mascot" of the forum...


Well, long story short... that was not manageable, especially here in Italy, were parental roles are clearly distinct, mothers should do mothers and fathers fathers.

I separated from my wife, hoping to have my spaces to continue to give the love to the children, but unfortunately that was not the case.

Depression hit hard, because I was now alone, male and the children were gone. That was the culprit of the pain, and Marina had only one option to continue to live without breaking the body... to align it to her perception. I don't currently know what this would bring... but I really had no choice.

[odysseus513]

Jessika put it just about perfectly.